In compact passenger cars that have the form of small station wagons the hat holding piece extends from the rear edge of the rear seat back to the rear hatch. In order to facilitate the access of the cargo space underneath the hat holding piece, the hat holding piece is hinged beside the rear seat back in the automobile body. By reason of this hinge the hat holding piece can be moved from a horizontal position in which it rests on lateral supports, into an upright position. This takes place automatically in the opening of the rear hatch with the aid of pull cords or other coupling elements that connect the rear hatch with the hat holding piece in the vicinity of its rear edge.
In modern automobiles the body that forms the roof section is relatively strongly drawn in, which leads to the result that the rear hatch opening and the clear space between the side walls or side windowpanes the in upward direction, is correspondingly strongly tapered. The tapering of the rear window opening is further reinforced if the automobile body is strongly rounded in the zone of the C-pillars, as corresponds to the modern trend. Since simultaneously the rear hatch opening runs obliquely, the swung-up hat holding piece emerges with its rear edge zone out of the cargo space opening.
So that the swung-up hat holding piece will not collide with the side windowpanes or C-pillars, it must be made correspondingly narrow. This in turn demands filling pieces be included inside the automobile body laterally underneath the rear side windowpanes. The filling pieces on their part impair the free loading volume when, for the enlargement of the cargo space, the hat holding piece is taken out and the rear seat back is reversed.
Essentially similar relations are present in the case of station wagons when their cargo space is closed with a cargo space covering. The cargo space covering has in connection to the roller curtain a rigid contour or molded part, the outer edge of which roughly follows a girdle or equatorial line which is defined by an imaginary section line. The section is defined by an imaginary horizontal plane through the extended roller curtain and the inside of the cargo-space or rear hatch lining.
It is a known practice, for example from DE-A-37 25 545, to swing the cargo space covering obliquely upward simultaneously with the opening of the rear hatch, in order to save the user from the necessity of having to let the cargo space covering run back into the roller housing.
The contour part in the known arrangement is a table shaped surface structure which, if its width is greater than the rear hatch opening, cannot be drawn out by the rear hatch as it is lifted. Hereby there arise considerable restrictions, and the coupling between the rear hatch and the cargo space covering is complicated, because it is not possible to fasten the rear edge of the loading space covering to the rear hatch simply with the aid of pull cords, in the manner that is known from small compact passenger cars for the raising of the hat holding piece. Also cargo space covers for this reason require as a rule filler pieces underneath the rear side windows in order to restrict the width of the roller curtain, inclusive of the contour part, to a measure such that collisions are prevented between the contour part and the edge of the cargo space opening in the drawing-out of the contour part from the cargo space openings.